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Rating: 
Summary: mesmerizing
Review: I did not read Marcom's acclaimed first novel and I went through a few false starts before this work vacuumed me out of myself for two whole days. This book is not a "Twinkie" or a light beach read. This is an "excuse me...uh hum...sir?...EXCUSE ME...we're closing now and you have to leave" kind of book. Mesmerizing, haunting, unexpected. Read it and learn about the first round of ethnic cleansing this crazy planet produced in the 20th century but more importantly for the cutting emotion the reading evokes.
Rating: 
Summary: A Literary Novel That Must Be Read!
Review: Marcom's "Three Apples Fell From Heaven" was my favorite book of 2001 and one of the best debuts by an American novelist in my six years of selling literary fiction. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the stunning quantum leap forward Marcom has taken with The Daydreaming Boy, her second novel. Marcom has matured into one of the most powerful, focused and effective voices in American fiction. While Three Apples. . . focused on the events of the Armenian genocide shifting in perspective with each of its characters, The Daydreaming Boy stays in the voice of a single narrator, an orphan of the catastrophe, who carries the memories with him not as a haunting, a vaguely nostalgic wound that will never heal. It informs everything about him- from his dreams of an unknown mother lost, to his refusal to meet anything or anyone in his life without disspassion and cold distance, other than a chain smoking primate in the zoological gardens. The language, which was strong in Marcom's first novel, is overwhelming, beautiful, restrained, perfect, here. She has learned how to control her story. It has the feeling of being distilled through the reflection of a mirror. What was seen head-on in Three Apples. . . has been fractured here, so that the reader can appreciate every nuance of light. The narrative recalls the haunting passiveness of one of Sebald's narrators mixed with the erotic detatchment and short shocks of imagery of Marguerite Duras. At other times one is reminded of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, but at all moments one is shaken by the unique pace and movement of Marcom's beautifully cruel, startling and original, poetic voice. The fact that I can only find comparisons to writers like Duras, Sebald and Durrell- all deceased- underscores how singular a talent Marcom is. She is a writer that we, as readers of literary fiction, cannot afford to squander.
Rating:
Summary: A Literary Novel That Must Be Read!
Review: Marcom's "Three Apples Fell From Heaven" was my favorite book of 2001 and one of the best debuts by an American novelist in my six years of selling literary fiction. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the stunning quantum leap forward Marcom has taken with The Daydreaming Boy, her second novel. Marcom has matured into one of the most powerful, focused and effective voices in American fiction. While Three Apples. . . focused on the events of the Armenian genocide shifting in perspective with each of its characters, The Daydreaming Boy stays in the voice of a single narrator, an orphan of the catastrophe, who carries the memories with him not as a haunting, a vaguely nostalgic wound that will never heal. It informs everything about him- from his dreams of an unknown mother lost, to his refusal to meet anything or anyone in his life without disspassion and cold distance, other than a chain smoking primate in the zoological gardens. The language, which was strong in Marcom's first novel, is overwhelming, beautiful, restrained, perfect, here. She has learned how to control her story. It has the feeling of being distilled through the reflection of a mirror. What was seen head-on in Three Apples. . . has been fractured here, so that the reader can appreciate every nuance of light. The narrative recalls the haunting passiveness of one of Sebald's narrators mixed with the erotic detatchment and short shocks of imagery of Marguerite Duras. At other times one is reminded of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, but at all moments one is shaken by the unique pace and movement of Marcom's beautifully cruel, startling and original, poetic voice. The fact that I can only find comparisons to writers like Duras, Sebald and Durrell- all deceased- underscores how singular a talent Marcom is. She is a writer that we, as readers of literary fiction, cannot afford to squander.
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